Why Both Russians and Americans Got Nowhere in Afghanistan
If you’re not going anywhere no matter what happens, or what price you’re forced to pay, you can outlast superpowers.
Different army, same outcome
Photographer: Vitaly Armand/AFP via Getty Images
The story of two superpower invasions of Afghanistan is all about the similarities that end up erasing the undeniable differences.
As the Soviet Union prepared to leave Afghanistan in 1988, it stepped up economic and military aid to the government of Mohammad Najibullah, even though it knew the requests for more weaponry were often larcenous, based on wildly inflated numbers of Afghan servicemen. Mikhail Gorbachev and his Politburo felt guilty about the withdrawal and wanted to compensate their “Afghan friends,” as official documents of the era referred to Najibullah and his people, for leaving them alone to face the fury of the U.S.-trained, -armed and -funded opposition.